July 2, 2012

26 comments:

Just returned from a day of swimming with my kids. While swimming, I had a realization: Althouse is right about men in shorts (which I recognize does not apply at swimming pools). I've mostly quit wearing them, but I am carving out a caveat. When it is 85 plus degrees, I can live with looking ridiculous (I still try not to venture out too much in them).

To wear shorts is to be daring. All other extremities can be dolled up with ease. Ugly arms? Distract people with rings and a tasteful watch. Ugly face? Try makeup or excessive facial hair. But there's not much you can do for unsightly legs except cover them up with pants.

Hiked a Presidential Traverse on Saturday. 23 miles and over 9000" of elevation gain. 18.5 hours of hiking, about 12 of those above treeline.

Absolutely beautiful weather. Very comfortable shorts and t-shirt weather from when we got up at 4am until we got well down into the valley around 9pm, after which it was a bit too warm, but not that bad.

We saw a couple of other groups near the start, but none chose the particular path up Madison that we took, so our group of 3 was alone until the summit. There was a couple groups on Madison, and more at Madison Springs hut. But we had the summit of Adams to ourselves for the five minutes we were there.

Jefferson was crowded because it is the easiest to hike, and Washington was very crowded, since you can drive to the summit, or take the cog railway. There was a fair amount of traffic on the way down to Lakes of the Clouds hut, but after that it really dropped off.

If you are into hiking, and in good shape, I would highly recommend it.

That is a hell of a hike, Ignorance. My wife has New England roots, and worked summers in the White Mountains, more or less in that area. We're going to climb Mt. Cardigan (Nothing like the Presidential), but I'm taking a day to do Washington. It will be in August, so it should be ok, but I know Washington can turn on you real fast.

Yeah, it was 18 miles of the most enjoyable hiking I've ever done, with the added bonus of 5 miles of grueling death-march tacked on to the end. I'm guessing there were a couple dozen people doing the traverse that day. Our group was clearly the slowest. Then again, with ages from 39 to 45, we were probably the oldest group too.

Linked to one of those "7 things you need to ... " and you go over there and it's one thing to check per page. The content could be put on one page simple as can be I do it all the time, every single day, and yet 7 little things take 7 pages to convey. I'm tired of that crap. Really tired. But I do check them out, see the set up and leave. Immediately now. No messing around. I decide in an instant that I simply do not care about 7 this or 11 that or 14 or anything at all that needs to be spread out so that it's click wait look read, click wait look read, click wait look read, click wait look read, click wait look read, click wait look read. Bite me. I have all day but no time for that.